KAKAPORA: In a graveyard at his school in India-held Kashmir, principal Ghulam Ahmed Bhat stares sadly at a mound of freshly dug earth after another former pupil was killed in the region’s conflict.

University student Shaista Hameed was caught in crossfire between soldiers and militants in February, after she joined scores of residents who poured onto the streets ostensibly to help the rebels escape.

Police officers claim that local people have begun making efforts to help suspected militants by putting themselves in harm’s way.

“She had been one of the brightest students of the school,” Mr Bhat said about the 22-year-old whose grave is adorned with flowers in Kakapora town.

Hundreds of mainly angry youth have converged in recent months on the scenes of gun battles that regularly erupt between government forces and militants opposed to Indian rule over the region.

Often pelting stones and hurling abuse, they attempt to distract security personnel to help trapped suspects escape their cordon and they have succeeded in several instances, security officials say. Three people, including Ms Hameed, have been killed and scores injured.

“It becomes an extremely difficult task dealing with humongous mobs turning up during our counter-insurgency operations,” Nalin Prabhat, Inspector General of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force, said. “They try to take away our actual focus at hand which is to neutralise the terrorists.”

Indian forces have been battling militants wanting independence or a merger of the territory with Pakistan since an armed insurgency erupted in 1989. Tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians, have been killed.

Violence has sharply declined in recent years following a major crackdown by the hundreds of thousands of security forces personnel deployed in the region. But mass protests were staged in 2008 through 2010 against Indian rule.

According to the officials, about 200 militants, mostly locals, are active across the region, down from several thousand in the 1990s.

‘New challenge’

A recent uptick in militant attacks had galvanised frustrated young Kashmiris, many of whom deeply resented the military’s presence, and regularly heard allegations of rights abuses and repression, political historian Siddiq Wahid said.

“How can we forget what has been done to generations of Kashmiri people?” asked a student in Kakapora taking part in the street actions.

Last Tuesday, angry residents in northern Handwara stormed an army bunker after a soldier was accused of molesting a local girl. Soldiers fired into the crowd, leaving three people dead, while two others have been killed in protests against the firing in recent days.

Mr Bhat said it was difficult to stop his former students taking part in the distraction efforts or even joining the militants’ ranks. Three ex-students turned rebels are also buried in the graveyard on the school’s grounds.

“The militants may be underground but everyone knows who they are. They (locals) identify with them and their cause. They choose to be a part of fighting all this (through street action),” he said.

In March, a group of nine heavily armed militants was trapped in an open field not far from Kakapora as troops moved in. Hundreds of villagers armed with stones descended on the field, as word quickly spread.

“Yes, it is a huge new challenge,” Mr Prabhat said, confirming the incident.

Government forces had been forced to change their counter-insurgency operations, becoming even more clandestine, to avoid tipping off villagers and causing civilian casualties, he added.

“We are now having to fight two-way battles, with the armed militants on one hand and fearless mobs on the other,” another police officer said.

A month before the March incident, police and the army ordered residents within a 2km radius to stay indoors during gun battles.

On the day Ms Hameed died, local rebel Adil Ashraf was killed in the gunfight.

“My sons left home to safeguard their self-respect and fight for the nation,” his mother Rafiqa, whose second son is also a militant, told AFP. “Stones are the people’s weapon,” she said.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2016